What happened to missing children Chris Dansby and Shane Walker?
Every forty seconds, children go missing in the United States, which is a horrifying and sobering statistic, to say the least. It’s a parent’s worst nightmare, and we can only hope we, or those close to us, will never have to experience a situation like that.
Mothers Rosa Glover & Allison Dansby probably never thought an experience like this would happen to them, but in 1989, it did. They didn’t know one another, but they soon had something in common that would connect them to one another. They each had a son, nineteen-month-year-old Shane Walker, and two-year-old Chris Dansby, who disappeared from Martin Luther King Jr. Towers in Harlem, NY.
Even though Chris & Shane went missing over thirty years ago, their disappearances are very fresh in people’s minds. What happened to the children who went missing, and will law enforcement ever catch a break that’ll give their families justice?
Warning: subject matters involves descriptions of child kidnapping and murder
How it happened
Chris Dansby & Shane Walker were cheerful and very close with their mothers. Chris disappeared in May 1989, and Shane disappeared in August of the same year. Because both cases were eerily familiar with one another, it led the police to wonder if the same perpetrator took them.
When Rosa Glover took her eyes off of her son Shane for a split second, it was like he had vanished into thin air. Similarly, when Allison Dansby left Chris with her mother, the same situation happened in the same fashion. It takes an incredibly evil type of person to swipe children right from under the supervision of their loved ones.
According to Chief Ronald J. Fenrich, who was the deputy at the time: “someone who wants a baby who is not qualified to adopt a baby might steal a baby or hire someone to do so.” While the two children missing remain a mystery, police say they still get tips, especially after releasing age progression photos.
Unsolved Mysteries coverage
The same year the children went missing, the well-known series Unsolved Mysteries premiered. The show covered several missing children cases, and Chris Dansby & Shane Walker were the subjects of the final episode of the revamped 2020 Netflix series.
Although the episode covered many vital details of both cases, they did leave an essential piece of information out. We know Chris & Shane disappeared in 1989, but many people don’t know that they both went missing on a Thursday evening. Is there a significance to this particular day of the week, or was it pure coincidence? For now, no one knows.
Similar cases
According to The Charley Project, a website that profiles over 14,000 “cold cases,” there are similar cases that might have significant correlations between the Harlem, NY cases. In March 1989, twenty-five-year-old Monique Rivera was approached by two women who were particularly interested in her two-month-old son Andre Terrance Bryant. After shopping & corresponding with each other, Rivera grew to trust the two women.
Unfortunately, on March 30th, Rivera’s body was found by Eastchester Bay, near City Island Road in the Bronx. She was found with defensive wounds on her body, and her son Andre was nowhere to be found. The mysterious women were heard from the last time when one of them called the Rivera home a day after the murder.
One of the women was reportedly “baffled” when the receiver informed her Rivera was deceased, as she had just gone shopping with her a day before. From that point on, the two women who befriended Rivera were never heard from or seen again. The disappearance of Andre has never been solved, but hopefully, the case won’t stay cold forever.
